‘The longer I spend in the Summer City, the more I notice the bad,’ Bloom said. ‘Some parts are not pleasant. There are whole Circles of Faded that are like madhouses, and no one gives them vim. Then there are the soul-mines, deep in kata. The whole city is built on the labour of the miners, but they get little recognition for it.’
‘You sound like a Communist,’ Rachel said. It was a trap: he was probing for Leftist sympathies and she had no real way to deceive him. Max had told her to expect it.
‘It used to be somewhat fashionable, once.’
‘Well, the Dimensionists always had Socialist ideas,’ Rachel said. That was true enough: Herbert Blanco West had spun the political party out of the Fabian Society, back in the day, and some of that heritage still remained, no matter how much they emphasised liberalism, reason and science in their rhetoric. ‘I joined the Service during wartime. We did not think too much about politics back then.’ She paused. ‘This is a very strange sort of interview, Peter.’
‘You are a strange sort of person.’
‘Should I take that as a compliment?’
‘Absolutely. It is a rare individual who follows an unconventional path as far as you have. And I do share some of your concerns. See how hard it is for us to understand each other’s worlds? No wonder we have inter-Court rivalry. We have no idea what goes on over there, and you cannot comprehend what it is like to be dead. Yet we should be the right and left hands of the Empire, dexter and sinister.’
‘So you would like me to keep tabs on the Winter Court for you, is that it?’ She thought of Roger Hollis, and there was nothing fake about her indignation.
‘You do not sound very enthusiastic.’
‘I am angry at some of my colleagues, yes. It does not mean that I will betray them.’
‘Really, Rachel, I said absolutely nothing about betrayal. But tell me—why are you angry at the Winter Court?’
‘Because I am not appreciated. I am given menial tasks a schoolgirl could do in her sleep. Yet I have nowhere to go. If I leave, I lose my pension and my Ticket, and then my destination is to become one of your Faded. My husband is unwell, and—’ She seized the iron railing with both hands. ‘I am trapped,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘Do you have any idea how that feels?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do.’ He paused. Then: ‘I was a student. There was a group of us who liked to scale college rooftops at night. We did not really have anything better to do. We all knew it was dangerous, but no one cared: Summerland awaited us all anyway.
‘Then a boy I knew, Cedric, fell to his death while trying to climb to the King’s College Chapel’s spires. No one thought it was a big deal. We carried an ectophone—you know, one of those big, old Marconi models—to the chapel roof and held a party there in his memory, while he was laughing with us on the Other Side.
‘That was when I realised everything would go on exactly the same, forever. Our fathers—our parents—mostly on the other side already, ran their businesses and would keep running them. It did not matter what we did, not in the slightest. I was destined to be … I don’t know what, a civil servant, forever. A nothing.’
Rachel was certain this was not the whole truth. Was Bloom turned at Cambridge? That meant the Soviets were on the lookout for talent years before the candidates even joined the Service. It required a four-dimensional mind to take a long view like that.
‘You seem sceptical, Rachel.’
Rachel swore. It was too easy to forget that to Bloom, her head was a glass vessel, with coloured emotions visible inside.
‘I am merely cold.’ Her breath had begun to steam. ‘I am afraid I will have to go soon. How did you escape your dreadful fate?’
‘I found something to believe in.’
Rachel sighed. ‘The Service. I see. Something bigger than yourself, something truly immortal. I used to think like that, but I am tired, Peter. My faith is weak. Maybe it always was. The Service is not what I hoped it would be, especially if you are a woman.’
‘What would you do to make it better?’
Rachel gritted her teeth. ‘I would see men like Harker … well, humiliated. Revealed for the fools they are.’
‘Revenge?’
‘Fair play.’
‘Rachel, here is what I propose. Keep a diary and share it with me. Include what you want in it, leave out whatever you wish. Write about your colleagues. Observe them. We will sort out some unofficial means of compensation and take it from there. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds like a good first step.’
‘Every journey begins with one, Rachel. Goodbye. We will speak again soon.’
* * *
‘That was completely useless,’ Rachel told Max Chevalier. She walked briskly along the Embankment, still shivering, keeping an eye on the road for cabs. ‘The only thing I got out of this was a cold.’
Max’s voice on the ectophone was calm. ‘It’s all going according to the plan. He found commonalities, built some trust, asked for a small thing that is not difficult for you to provide—but which is sufficiently dubious for you to keep it a secret. You need to think like a naturalist: you establish certain behaviours, make them natural, and then—’
‘Then the frog cooks, is that it?’
‘Exactly. The next time, or the one after that, he is going to ask for something more substantial, and we are going to give it to him.’
‘We can’t give him anything. That would be treason! And we can’t keep this up for much longer. He is in the Iberian Section, for God’s sake. The newspapers are speculating that West could send troops there if things get worse. We can’t put our boys in harm’s way.’
‘Mrs White, every castle that defends this kingdom of ours is built out of a thousand little treasons, you should know that by now.’
Rachel stopped and looked back at the Marconi Tower, looming over the river. Like a firecracker, Bloom had said. She imagined it burning and falling like a flaming tree, crushing buildings beneath it.
‘We will get him, don’t worry. You have done a fine job, a fine job indeed. He was more aggressive than I expected. I wonder if he is under pressure. Until now, he has been so very flighty, our little Bloom bird.’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But if it ever looks like we are going to risk the lives of good Englishmen, we will have to rethink this.’
‘Of course.’
‘In any case, it is easy for you to talk, Mr Chevalier. What have you been doing in this enterprise so far?’
‘Oh, just what I do best,’ Max said. ‘Watching. Watching and listening.’ He made a little trilling sound, like a bird. ‘Speaking of which, there is a spirit not far away, watching us. Quite a solid self-image—and a family resemblance, I’ll wager.’
Rachel sighed. The spirit Watchers of the Summer Court had nothing on Henrietta Forbes-Smith. ‘That would be my mother. I will deal with it.’
Rachel pressed the preset button that activated the beacon for her mother. Then she used the alphabet rotors to spell out a message.
MOTHER. NOT A GOOD TIME. WORKING. DO NOT SPEND VIM. WILL CALL SOON.
In a few moments, the phone rattled and the rotors spun back a response.
WEAR RUBBER BOOTS, BBC SAYS RAIN.
Most of the high-level intelligence briefings Peter Bloom had attended during his career would have sounded dreadfully dull to an outsider. No raised voices, a careful consideration of facts, all the passion and excitement of a Tuesday morning meeting in an insurance company.
The second session of the Special Committee for the Iberian Problem was not like those meetings.